Flash Point (18 page)

“Hey, sis,” Kaylie said casually, just as if she were expected to be there. “Is that breakfast? Oh, we’re starving!”

We
. Amy sat utterly still.
We
.

Where had Kaylie spent the night?

Violet broke the long, awkward pause, which seemed to bewilder Cai, by speaking directly to him. “How’s Tommy?”

“Doing well. They’ll release him later today. I just came from the hospital. Kaylie was already there, trying to get information about him.” He looked at Kaylie with adoring eyes, clearly considering her an angel of mercy. Kaylie smiled modestly.

She looked fantastic. Her dark curls shone and bounced. She wore the green silk sweater that had once represented the height of quality to both her and Amy, and next to the way it darkened her eyes to emerald, Amy’s new top faded into a pile of gray cloth.

Rafe said coldly, “I’m Rafael Torres.”

“Hi,” Kaylie said, clearly uninterested. “Cai, are you hungry? Maybe we can order breakfast, too?” She touched his cheek.

Violet said, “Sorry, we’re all done, and I need to clean up here.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Kaylie said, “I should check on Gran, anyway. Cai, we can order and eat in our suite. Mine and Amy’s, I mean.”

“Well . . . OK.” Cai seemed to sense that more was going on here, but he didn’t know what. However, from the look he gave Kaylie when she touched his cheek, Amy could see what would be going on eventually. Her breakfast curdled in her stomach. And now she couldn’t even go back to her own suite without seeing them.

“Well, bye-bye,” Violet said. “Gotta get organized now.”

Cai and Kaylie left. Violet glanced from Amy to Rafe, clearly unsure what he guessed, or what Amy wanted said in front of him.

Amy didn’t want anything said, not with anyone. She wanted to go somewhere and get herself under control. After all, how stupid was she being? Pretty damned stupid. She had no claim on Cai, and he had never shown any interest in her. This was just pheromones, just a silly crush, just nothing. That it hurt so much was the ultimate stupidity.
“You feel too much, Amy
.
”
Stupid.

So why didn’t telling herself any of this actually help?

Then Rafe said the perfect thing. “Amy—want to play some chess?”

Violet said scornfully, “She doesn’t—”

“Yes, I do! Do you have a set with you? I brought mine but—” But she didn’t want to have to go to her room to get it.

“I have one,” Rafe said. “What I don’t have is an official FIDE rating, and yours is pretty high.”

“But when we first had general introductions and I asked if anyone played, you didn’t volunteer that you—”

“I don’t tell everybody everything. Come on.”

Rafe’s room, two doors down from Violet’s, was identical to it but much neater. On the polished table Rafe set up a cheap plastic chess set. He didn’t talk, which Amy appreciated. She beat him, but not so easily that it didn’t keep her mind occupied. As always, absorption in the game, both logical and intuitive, soothed her. Violet might not understand, but Amy was not Violet.

“Did you know,” Rafe said after he lost the second game, “that Benjamin Franklin loved chess?”

“I do know that,” Amy said. “He was the best player in the colonies, and considered chess good training for life. Rafe, I think the next scenario will come soon.”

“I think you’re right. And meanwhile, we’ll get more busywork—oh, sorry, Myra—more game reviews to keep us occupied while we’re sequestered here. And, I guess, selected interviews. To keep us in the public eye and show off those glamorous clothes you’re wearing.”

So he had noticed. Rafe wore his old jeans and a sweater stretched out at the neck. Amy raised an eyebrow and gestured at the sweater, and Rafe grinned. “I’ll wear the new stuff when Myra gives me a reason to.”

His cell rang. Rafe answered, listened, and said to Amy, “Credit me with telepathy. That was Myra. All hands on deck in the hotel ballroom an hour from now. It’s interview time.”

Amy put three pawns in their cardboard box. “What do you think they’ll ask us?”

“Drivel. Then they’ll write entirely different drivel and attribute it to us. Why are you picking those up? An hour is time for another game.”

“I have to put on makeup. And the outfit Serena told me to wear. And do my hair. It takes longer than you—I’m a
girl
, Rafe.”

“I know,” he said, putting away a clutch of pawns, his head bent so that Amy couldn’t see his face.

* * *

The interview at first looked intimidating—cameras, reporters, lighting equipment filling the hotel ballroom—but turned out to be easy because no one but Myra got to do much talking. She controlled the whole thing so completely that not even Waverly got to say more than a few bland sentences. Afterward all six of the “Lab Rats”—Rafe’s nickname had stuck, although Amy wished he’d picked some other rodent—went to the TLN suite for “debriefing.” Myra reminded them, “No blogging, posting, Tweeting, or Facebook until we say so, but you can surf the Internet and e-mail each other. You each have an AOL account under the alias you used to register with the hotel.”

“AOL,” Violet muttered. “ISP for the half-dead.” Amy stifled a laugh.

The evening was spent in Amy’s suite with Violet, Rafe, and even Waverly checking out their own images on TV and the Internet. Cai and Kaylie had not appeared, to Amy’s relief. Kaylie slipped into her own bed sometime during the night, although that relief Amy didn’t want to admit even to herself.

* * *

Alex Everett keyed a number into his cell. He wasted no time on preliminaries. “Myra, did you order that attack on Tommy Wimmer?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Myra said, and hung up.

Frowning, Alex slowly lowered the dead phone.

Nineteen

F
RIDAY

THE NEXT MORNING
Myra startled them all. “Time for your next scenario,” she said.

Glances among the Lab Rats. Cai said cautiously, “You’re telling us beforehand that it’s a scenario?”

“Yes.” Big smile from Myra, which no one returned. “You’ve all had breakfast? Good. Change into jeans and meet me at the loading dock in ten minutes.”

At the loading dock Amy touched the heavy bandage on Tommy’s arm. “Hey, you all right?”

“Somebody hit me.”

“I know. Are you all right now?”

“Yes.” Tommy gave her his sweet smile.

They piled into a stretch limo. No one spoke much. The ride took them deep into the suburbs, where the car stopped in an industrial park. Its sign said
PYLON RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
. Amy blinked. Pylon, newly merged with TLN, the target of the protestors who’d objected to its holdings in chemicals and in nuclear power. Pylon the python.

“Mushroom cloud, here we come,” Rafe said.

Waverly said, “Shut up.”

Myra, who had traveled in a second car, met them in a conference room containing a table with four computers and a pile of neatly stacked boxes of sneakers. “All of you, find the box with your size and put on the sneakers. You all wore the jeans that Serena chose, good. Now, you’ll do this scenario in teams of two. The teams are Cai and Violet, Amy and Rafe, Waverly and Tommy.”

“No,” Waverly said instantly.

Myra gazed at her.

“I won’t work with Tommy. You just want to make me look bad, like I did on the show on Wednesday. It’s not fair!”

If Waverly had looked bad on Wednesday, it hadn’t been Myra’s fault. Waverly had walked past a bleeding man and then bribed her way out of trouble with her father’s money. Amy expected Myra to ignore Waverly’s outburst, but instead she looked thoughtful.

“Perhaps you’re right, Waverly. Your responses to Tommy might be all too predictable. All right, the teams are Cai and Violet, Amy and Tommy, Waverly and Rafe.”

Waverly smiled, as well she should: Rafe would make a good teammate. But what if this unknown scenario required brute strength instead of brains? Then Amy would be lucky to team with Tommy—maybe. Tommy’s left arm was bandaged. Was he right- or left-handed? Amy couldn’t remember. Her chest tightened.

“Because there is only one venue for this scenario,” Myra continued, “you need to take turns. Tommy and Amy are first. The rest of you are free to use the computers or to talk or to send out for coffee if you like. But you may not leave this room. Amy and Tommy, follow me.”

They were led through corridors and down an elevator to a basement room with nothing in it except a huge windowless white box and a bank of computers staffed with technicians. The techs regarded Amy and Tommy curiously. She was reminded of the hospital room where Gran was slid into an MRI while doctors monitored the results from the outside. Amy felt a shudder run through Tommy’s body.

Myra said, “This is the prototype for a new virtual reality game being developed by one of TLN’s new affiliate companies. You will recall that the contract you signed prohibits any discussion of the tech you see at TLN, and I want to emphasize that we can prosecute if you violate nondisclosure. And we will. Tommy, that means you can’t tell anybody what happens inside this box, not
anybody
, or you will get in big trouble. Do you understand?”

Tommy nodded, wide-eyed with fear. Amy took his hand.

“All right, then,” Myra said pleasantly. “This game is called Frustration Box. The object is to make the door open to let you out. And here is your only clue: ‘red yellow.’ Did you get that?”

“Red yellow,” Amy repeated. “What does—”

“Good luck,” Myra said. Abruptly a narrow door opened in the box and Myra nudged them through. With amazing speed the door sealed behind them.

Amy and Tommy stood in a featureless white room about twelve feet square: white plastic-looking walls, ceiling, floor. No windows. The only hint of cameras was a line of translucent ceiling panels down the center of the room, set flush with the rest of the ceiling. Amy waited, but nothing happened.

“What . . . what are we supposed to do?” Tommy said.

“I don’t know yet. We wait, I guess.”

A voice from the ceiling said, “Game on. Twelve minutes.” Dots appeared on the walls.

Amy spun around, surveying them. Three yellow, three red, three blue, scattered among the four walls. But what was she to do with them? As she wondered, the dots disappeared and then reappeared in different places, on different walls. Tommy trembled.

“It’s OK, Tommy, it’s a game!” Amy said as cheerfully as she could. “Remember that Myra said ‘red yellow’? Let’s press first a red dot and then a yellow one and see what happens.”

Nothing happened. The dots kept disappearing and reappearing. Amy and Tommy each pressed a red one and then raced to press a yellow one; the dots never seemed to appear close together. Nothing made the door open.

After a few minutes of this, the ceiling voice said, “Ten minutes.” And the
walls shifted
.

Amy gasped. The length of room stretching away from the locked door was still about twelve feet, but now the width was only ten feet. Would it become narrower and narrower until they were crushed? No, that couldn’t happen, this was a
game
, it had to be safe. . . . Didn’t it?

“The wall moved!” Tommy cried.

“Yes, isn’t that fun?” Amy choked out. “It’s to make us think faster! Tommy, you press a red dot at the same time I press a yellow one. Ready? Go!”

It didn’t open the door. They tried pressing two red ones and two yellow ones at the same time, Amy stretching her body full length against one wall and Tommy contorting himself to use both his bandaged arm and his good one at the same time. That didn’t work either.

“Eight minutes,” the ceiling said, and the wall moved forward another two feet.

Tommy gave a great cry and curled up on the floor in the fetal position, as he had during the alley scenario. Amy, hating Myra Townsend and Alex Everett all over again, knelt beside him. “Tommy, you have to get up. We can do this, we
can
.”

“No we can’t! The walls will squish us!”

“I promise you they won’t. It’s just a game. Nothing will hurt you—Tommy, I promise!”

He didn’t move. Amy glanced at the ceiling. Was this being filmed? Of course it was: film for the cruel and insensitive to laugh at when it aired on TLN. Last night on the Internet, Amy had read hundreds of comments about the show, from reviewers and bloggers and YouTube commentators. Many had been outraged at putting Tommy’s mental disabilities on display, but more had been either amused or falsely judicious, saying that Tommy must have chosen this and anyway he was making a pile of money off it.

Why had Tommy chosen this public humiliation? Why didn’t he un-choose it?

Now was not the time to ask. Amy went on pleading with him to get up until the ceiling said, “Six minutes,” and the wall moved again. Now the walls were only six feet apart. Amy gave up on Tommy and studied the dots, which seemed to be appearing and reappearing faster than before.
Red yellow, red yellow, red yellow. . . .
No help in Myra’s “clue.” What else did she notice about the pattern of the dots? Were they somehow connected to mathematical progressions: prime numbers or doubling or Fibonacci sequences or—

No. No connection that she could see. Besides, this had to be a problem that the game company could market to ordinary people, not just to nerds with a weird taste for mathematics. Unless this particular game set had been programmed just for the Lab Rats, which it probably had been to make it difficult enough for the show.

Programmed just for the Lab Rats
.

“Tommy, get up!” Amy said. “I have an idea!”

Tommy didn’t move. Amy wanted to kick him, to cradle him, to get him away from a place he found so humiliating and terrifying. Then she had a second idea.

She knelt by Tommy and put her mouth directly over his ear. “Tommy, this is what you have to do. It’s what Cai wants you to do. He told me. You trust Cai, don’t you?”

“Cai,” Tommy murmured.

“Yes, Cai, who takes care of you. This is what Cai wants you to do. Count to ten very slowly—you can do that, can’t you?”

A slight nod of the head.

“Count to ten. Then jump up and say, ‘I got an idea!’ Then put your eyeball right up to a red dot. Right up to it. Can you do those three things? Count to ten, say ‘I got an idea!’ and put your eye up to a red dot. For Cai!”

Another nod. Amy jumped up and said with disgust, “Then I’ll try my idea alone!” She raced over to a wall of dots and waited. When the wall moved again, she touched a red dot then a yellow at the exact time the walls moved. And wouldn’t it be weird if that really was the key?

It wasn’t. The ceiling said, “Four minutes,” and the wall moved to four feet away from its opposite side, barely providing enough room for Tommy’s huddled bulk. Amy held her breath. Would he do it? He had to remember the three instructions, he had to overcome his fear, he had to trust her, or at least trust that she really did represent Cai . . . which of course she didn’t. Poor Tommy, everybody lied to him—

“I got an idea!” Tommy yelled, jumping up and smashing into one of the walls. His injured arm hit the hard plastic, he cried out in pain, and Amy grimaced. So much for her plan—

But Tommy turned himself in the narrow space and jammed his eye against a red dot just before it disappeared. Amy immediately did the same to the closest yellow dot. And the door to the Frustration Box swung open just as the ceiling announced “Two minutes” and the wall slid again.

Red yellow. Programmed just for the Lab Rats. And Myra’s insistence that “for security reasons” all their retina scans be on file. Not their fingerprints—just their retina scans.

Tommy whooped and squeezed through the two feet of space to the door. Amy followed, fighting claustrophobia and triumph. She still had to face Myra.

Myra stood just outside the door to the Frustration Box. She looked sour. “So that was Tommy’s idea.”

“Yes. You got it on film,” Amy said innocently. There—let
that
shut the mouths of all those cruel jerks laughing at Tommy on the Internet.

“Sebastian will take you to the limo.” Myra gestured to one of her flunkies, who led Tommy and Amy out. Amy went with her head high, thinking that at least this episode of the show was one she wouldn’t cringe while watching. Tommy would look like a winner even if, once again, she would not. There were public winners and there were private winners.

Something Myra would never know anything about.

* * *

The limo took Tommy and Amy back to the Fairwood Hotel without waiting for the others. Amy, not knowing if they were being filmed while in the car, waited until she and Tommy were on their floor. Then she led him to a small sitting area she’d discovered on the floor above, an alcove at the end of a hallway with two chairs, a small table, and a spectacular view of the city eighteen stories below.

“Why are we here, Amy? Is it another game?” Tommy looked apprehensive.

“No, no. I just want to talk to you.”

“Did Cai say it was OK?”

“Yes.” Another lie, but Amy didn’t think Cai would object. “Is Cai related to you? Your cousin or something?”

“Cai is my guardian.”

For a moment Amy thought he meant “legal guardian,” but then Tommy burst out, “A real guardian, not like my fucking uncle Sam!”

It was the first time she’d ever heard Tommy curse. His face distorted into fury, and an involuntary jolt of fight-or-flight shot through Amy. Tommy looked scary when angry. And he was so big!

“Sorry,” he said, flushed, and looked like Tommy again.

She pushed on. If she and Tommy were ever teamed again, she needed to know this stuff. “So Cai is your ‘real guardian’ because he takes care of you, right?”

“People are mean sometimes.”

“I know. Tommy, was your uncle Sam mean to you?”

Tommy panicked. His eyes darted around, and he shoved his fist—practically the whole thing—into his mouth. Around the fingers he mumbled, “I can’t tell!”

She put a hand on his arm. “It’s OK, you don’t have to tell me. But . . . did you tell Cai?”

“I can’t tell anybody!” Tommy looked ready to bolt.

“You don’t have to. You don’t have to tell anybody anything. And Cai is your guardian and I’m your friend, OK?”

Slowly he calmed down. Amy stroked his sleeve, thinking of all that strength coupled with all that fear. What had been done to this poor boy? Then she got a sickening clue.

Tommy said, “I don’t like tiny little places like that game!”

“No, no. But we won, Tommy. You and I won.”

That calmed him a little. He said, with a sudden flash of shrewdness, “But it was your idea, Amy. Not my idea.”

She smiled. “True. But that will be our secret.”

“OK.” Tommy’s smile vanished. “Cai’s brother died.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t think what else to say.